Roman Cursive Influence in the Text of the Georgics 313

early (weH before the time of the earliest surviving MSS and
papyri), it seems reasonable to conclude that a better understand-
ing of the early textual history of the Vergilian corpus (as weH as
that of other Latin authors) can be obtained only by accepting the
fact that cursive scripts were used in the early stages of the trans-
mission of the text.
Akron/Ohio Robert E. Gaebel
THE LOW BIRTH-RATE IN ANCIENT ROME:
A POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTING FACTOR
There is considerable evidence to show that Roman society
in the late Republic and early Empire was afflicted by a low birth-
rate. Augustus in 18 B.C. found it necessary to pass the lex Iulia
de maritandis ordinibus in the hope of raising the birth-rate by
penalizing the unmarried and the childless. In 9 A.D. he attemp-
ted to supplement this law with the lex Papia Poppaea. The very
existence of this legislation indicates that the problem of childless-
ness was widespread and long-Iasting, a view which is further
supported by references to this subject in Latin literatureI).
A number of theories have been put forward by scholars to
explain this fact. Among these are the notion that Romans prac-
1) Augustus's attempt to raise the birth-rate did not lack precedent in Ro-
man history. Valerius Maximus teils the story that the censors Camillus and
Postumius, as early as 403 B.C., had fined elderly bachelors for failing to marry
and sire children (Va!. Max. 2.9.1) and Metellus Macedonicus, censor in 131 B.C.,
made a speech urging men to marry and procreate, which was read out to the
Senate by Augustus in support of his own legislation (Suet. Aug. 89.2). However
it seems unlikely that Augustus's attempts to solve the problem were very success-
fu!. Tacitus states explicitly that they were not (Tac. Ann. 3.25) and in view of the
fact that the Augustan legislation was reinforced by Domitian and re-enacted in the
second and third centuries A.D. it seems that the low birth-rate continued. Jones
disagrees with this view and argues that there was a slow but appreciable increase
in the birth-rate following Augustus's legislation (A.H.M. Jones, Augustus [Lon-
don 1970], p. 136). Nevertheless there is considerable evidence for the existence of
marriages which produced no children at all or only one child, as &lsdon shows
a.p.V.D. Balsdon, Roman Women [London 1962] pp. 194ff.).
314 A. M. Devine
tised contraception and abortion to avoid the birth of unwanted
children
2
), that members of the upper classes suffered from a form
of dysgenic lead poisoning caused mainly by the use of lead cook-
ing vessels, which rendered many of them sterile
3
), and that a
form of natural selection in favour of infertility took place, due to
the common practice among noble males of trying to marry
heiresses who were the sole children of their families and therefore
likely to demonstrate low fertility in their turn
4
). Any or all of
these practices may have been genuine contributing factors to the
low birth-rate in Rome. However it is the contention of this paper
that a far more significant contributing factor to the low birth-rate
was the Roman practice of taking very hot daily baths.
Modern medical research has shown conclusively that expo-
sure to heat has adetrimental effect on male fertility. As early as
the end of the nineteenth century it was generally recognized that
testes which remain undescended ('cryptorchid' testes) are almost
invariably steriles). Piana and Savarese in 1891 showed that when
the scrotal testes of rats were pushed into the abdomen and re-
tained there surgically they atrophied
6
). They attributed this effect
of cryptorchidism to the higher temperature in the abdomen. In
1923 Fuku?) and MooreS) independently showed that similar
changes could be produced by locally heating the testis. It has
been found that temperatures above 98.6F (normal human body
2) The use of contraception by the Romans is discussed in K. Hopkins,
Contraception in the Roman Empire: Comparative Studies in Society and History
8 (1965), 124-151 and S. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves (New
York 1975), pp. 166 ff. Most of the contraceptive techniques used by the Romans
(such as wearing an amulet made from a spider's head [Pliny N.H. 29.85J or
inducing sneezing after intercourse [Soranus 1.61J) must have been singularly
ineffectual. Occlusive agents such as oil and honey, used to block the os of the
uterus, may have had greater success, but it seems unlikely that contraception
played a large part in causing the low birth-rate. Abortion was certainly practised,
as Ovid attests (Ovid, Amores 2.13 and 14) and was, predictably, hazardous. It
may have contributed to the population problem by killing mothers as weil as
foetuses.
3) S. C. Gilfillan, Roman Culture and Dysgenic Lead Poisoning: The Man-
kind Quarterly vol. 5, no. 3 Oanuary - March 1965),3-20.
4) H. M. Last, Letter to N. H. Baynes: JRS (1947), 152-6.
5) B. P. SetchelI, The Mammalian Testis (London, 1978), p. 360.
6) G. P. Piana and G. Savarese, Su alcuni studii anatomo-patologici: La
Clinica Veterinaria 14(1891), 50-51.
7) N. Fukui, Action of body temperature on the testicle: Japan. Med. World
3 (1923), 160-3.
8) C. R. Moore and H. D. Chase, Heat application and testicular degenera-
tion: Anat. Rec. 26 (1923), 344-5.
The Low Birth-Rate in Ancient Rome 315
temperature) have effects of this kind in most mammals and that
the higher the temperature the shorter the exposure needed to
cause testicular damage and subsequent lowering of fertili ty9). It
has also been shown that repeated applications of heat produce
progressive damage
10
).
There can be little doubt that the baths enjoyed by the Ro-
mans were very hot and very frequent. According to Pliny the
EIder (PI. N.H. 36.121) the census of baths taken by Agrippa in 33
B.C. showed that there were 170 baths in Rome and this number
undoubtedly increased with time. It is common knowledge that
Romans, even of the lower social dasses, were in the habit of
taking daily baths and some seem to have bathed even more fre-
quently (Petronius, Satyricon 72). The usual routine!!) for a bath-
er was to play a game of ball in the sphaeristerium to warm up
before entering the tepidarium where he would sweat for a while
with his dothes on. He would then undress in the apodyterium
and be anointed with oiI. After this he would sweat profusely in
the caldarium and even more profusely in the laconicum, which
was directly over the hypocaust. The next step would be to have
warm, tepid and finally cold water poured over hirn, after which
he would be scraped with a strigil and sponged. He would end his
bath with a cold plunge in the frigidarium.
For the purposes of this paper the time spent in the caldarium
and the laconicum is the most significant part of this routine. It has
already been pointed out that temperatures over 98.6 F can cause
testicular damage and, while it is difficult to establish the exact
temperatures which would have been reached in these parts of the
baths, they would certainly have been higher than this. The hot
springs at Bath, used in the Roman baths, have a natural tempera-
ture of 120F
12
), while a sauna, which is probably the dosest
modern equivalent to a Roman caldarium, reaches temperatures
of 200F or higher - sufficient to destroy all but the hardiest
spermatozoa.
Evidence from ancient authors confirms the impression that
the baths of the early Empire were sweltering fire-boxes in which
9) Ibid.
10) K. Bowler, The effects of repeated temperature applications to the testis
on fertility in male rats: J. Reprod. Fertil. 14 (1967), 171-3.
11) The details of this routine probably varied somewhat. Carcopino gives a
good basic outline of it in ]. Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (New Haven
1940) p. 284. .
12) L. Wright, Clean and Decent (London 1960), p. 19.
316 A. M. Devine
the Romans were regularly parboiled. The most vigorous critic of
this institution is the Younger Seneca. He speaks of the marble-
lined pools (Seneca, Ep. 86.6): in quas multa sudatione corpora
exinanita (exsaniata codd.) demittimus ('into which we lower our
bodies when they have been exhausted by abundant perspira-
tion'). Later in the same letter he contrasts the moderate tempera-
ture of the baths of early times with (Seneca, Ep. 86.10): hane,
quae nuper inuenta est similis ineendio, adeo quidem, ut eonuietum
in aliquo seelere seruum uiuum lauari oporteat. Nihil mihi uidetur
iam interesse, ardeat balineum an ealeat ('this recently invented
heat, resembling a conflagration, to such an extent indeed that a
slave convicted for some criminal offence ought now to be bathed
alive. Nowadays it seems to me that there is no difference bet-
ween a hot bath and a bath on fire').
Seneca was not the only writer to complain about the searing
heat in the baths of the early Empire. Martial also refers to it
(Martial, Epigrams 6.42) and the EIder Pliny includes in his in-
dictment of evil influences which have ruined the morals of the
Empire (Pliny, N.H. 29.26): balineae ardentes quibus persuasere
in eorporibus cibos eog,ui ut nemo non minus ualidus exiret,
oboedientissimi uere ejjerrentur ('scalding baths by which they
[sc. 'doctors'] have persuaded us that food is cooked
13
) in our
bodies, so that everybody goes out of them weaker and the most
submissive are carried out').
Seneca and the EIder Pliny may be exaggerating slightly out
of moral zeal, but a passage from the letters of the Younger Pliny
seems to corroborate the substance of their statements. In describ-
ing the murder of Larcius Macedo by his slaves, Pliny points out
that the slaves were able to pretend plausibly (though deceitfuIly)
that his coIlapse had been caused by the heat of his bath (Pliny,
Ep. 3.14). If the Roman baths were hot enough to cause fainting
and fatigue, they were probably hot enough also to cause chronic
low fertility among males.
Precise statistics on the birth-rate in ancient Rome are im-
possible to obtain and the problem is further complicated by the
difficulty of determining how many people remained childless by
choice. However two examples of weIl known Romans who
seem to have suffered from low fertility in spite of their earnest
desire for offspring, while proving nothing in isolation may
13) This is presumably a pun on concoquere (or sometimes just coquere),
meaning 'to digest'.
The Low Birth-Rate in Ancient Rome 317
perhaps be indicative of a general trend. The emperor Augustus,
who according to Suetonius (Suet., Aug. 82) pampered his health
by taking sweat baths, in the course of three marriages
l4
) was only
able to father a single child. Similarly the Younger Pliny, whose
fondness for hot baths can be inferred from several passages in his
letters (Pliny, Ep. 2.17.26, 5.6.25, 7.16, 7.21.3) remained childless
through three marriages
I5
). Other examples could be adduced,
particularly from among the Emperors
I6
).
The baths must have made an enormous contribution to the
welfare of the Romans through their encouragement of hygiene
and regular exercise and their usefulness should not be under-
valued. Yet even in ancient times they were thought to have their
dangers and these hazards may not have been limited to the possi-
bility of moral corruption or sudden death
I7
). In the light of mod-
ern medical evidence it now seems likely that they also included
quite a strong risk to any man's chances of eventually obtaining
the ius trium liberorum.
University of New England
Armidale/Australia
A. M. Devine
14) However the first of these was not consummated, according to
Suetonius (Suet., Aug. 62).
15) Pliny's third wife Calpurnia had a single pregnancy, ending in miscar-
riage (Pliny, Ep. 8.10 and 11). He makes no reference even to such slim hope of
children as this from his previous marriages.
16) Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and Commodus all died childless. Interestingly
enough, Hadrian's fondness for attending the public baths is attested by his bio-
grapher (SHA, Had. 17.6), while Commodus was actually strangled in his bath.
His assailants might have had difficulty finding hirn anywhere else - he is said to
have taken seven or eight hot baths per day (SHA, Comm. 11.5).
17) Unsavoury loiterers such as vulgar food vendors and procurers seem to
have lurked at the baths (Seneca, Ep. 56.2, Martial, 12.19) and Juvenal predicts a
fatal heart-attack for gluttons who waddie into the baths after gorging Guv., Sat.
1.143---4). Some Christians also disapproved strongly of the baths because of their
lewd reputation and warned their brethren away from them. Jerome, for instance,
speaks approvingly of women whose virtue is indicated by their filth Gerome, Ep.
45.3).